A Super Mario variety blog.
Screenshots, photos, sprites, gifs, scans and more from all around the world of Super Mario Bros.
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The files of Mario Kart 8 Deluxe contain remainders of a test course that once existed during development, called “test_DanceFloor”. No models remain of the track itself, but the lighting setup is still available and can be seen in action by applying it to other courses.
In the screenshot, the lighting from test_DanceFloor is applied to Mario Circuit, making it look dark purple. As such, it can be assumed that the track likely resembled a dance club with similarly low lighting. Whether the test track eventually became Electrodrome or whether it was made purely for the developers without any intent of being developed into a finished course is unknown.
Main Blog | Patreon | Twitter | Bluesky | Small Findings | Source
In Super Mario 64 DS, normally only Mario can fight King Boo to obtain the key to unlock Luigi. When Mario enters the boss battle room, he sees that his reflection in a large mirror changes to look like Luigi. Internally, this is accomplished by mirroring the movement of the control points (“bones”) of Mario’s model and simply applying the bones to a Luigi model instead. Since the two are so similar in build, the result appears natural.
However, if glitches are used to bring Wario into the boss battle instead, it becomes apparent that this method was not designed to work with anyone except Mario. Since Wario’s bones are arranged very differently from Mario’s, Luigi’s model becomes distorted and unnatural upon copying them, as seen in the screenshot.
Note that the screenshot was taken by increasing the internal resolution of the game and this could not be seen in such clarity on original hardware.
Main Blog | Patreon | Twitter | Bluesky | Small Findings | Source: fawfulthegreat64
Top: animation from the “A Really Short History of Donkey Kong” extra feature on the “Ultimate Donkey Edition” DVD of the 2007 The King of Kong documentary.
Bottom: animatic for the scene, found on animator Gabe Swarr’s personal website.
Main Blog | Patreon | Twitter | Bluesky | Source: image, info: devilslefthandman
A bizarre visual glitch in Super Mario World’s final level is that picking up a Mechakoopa as any big Mario form will cause Mario’s head to disappear when turning around.
Examining the sprite slots in the game’s memory reveals that Mario’s head is replaced by the Mechakoopa’s winding key when he turns around. It was presumably supposed to load into a new sprite slot but, due to an oversight, overwrites Mario’s head instead.
Main Blog | Patreon | Twitter | Bluesky | Small Findings | Source: MaxwelOlinda1
Just like “Tomorrow Hill” in WarioWare: Smooth Moves, Penny’s song in WarioWare: Get It Together has a “failure mix” version whereby off-key alternate segments replace some parts of the song whenever Penny loses a microgame. Since it is only possible to lose up to four microgames before the song ends, it requires many attempts to hear all parts of the mix, and it cannot ever be heard in full in-game.
This is the full failure song extracted from the game’s files. Here is an example of how the lyrics change in this version:
Original: Tinker, thinker, dreamer to the core.
Singer, mechanic, she’s all that and more.
Failure: Tinker, thinker, dreamer to the core.
Pick yourself up when you fall on the floor.
Main Blog | Patreon | Twitter | Bluesky | Small Findings | Source: jamnjelly3102
Top: the Tree Top Town level in Donkey Kong Country is set in a village of houses built into tall trees. The music that plays in this level is called “Treetop Rock” in the English version of the official soundtrack. However, in the Japanese version, the music is called “The Ewok Level” instead (number 23).
This is a reference to the 1983 film Star Wars: Episode VI: Return of the Jedi, where a location called the forest moon of Endor was featured that the Tree Top Town level greatly resembles. It was populated by the Ewok species, hence the name of the track.
Bottom: interestingly, the name has remained as the official title of the track on the Japanese version of the Nintendo Music app, which is surprising given Nintendo’s usual willingness to remove any references to outside media to prevent any legal issues.
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At one point in Mario & Luigi: Brothership, Bowser Jr. announces an extremely large coin reward for catching Mario and Luigi, which appears to be simply a random number to Western audiences.
However, this is actually intended to be a pun using goroawase, a type of Japanese phonetic matching, to sound like a sentence when spoken aloud. Different digits each have several ways they can be pronounced for the purposes of goroawase, but with a certain pronunciation, the number spells out “Bowser is the best”.
Main Blog | Patreon | Twitter | Bluesky | Small Findings | Source: this_Ozzi
Extremely rough concept sketches of the Mario and Bowser post-battle dialogue scenes in Super Mario Galaxy (top), seen in the official 2007 Prima guide for the game.
Despite being very rudimentary, they already reflect the finished scene (bottom), with Mario landing next to Bowser, then Bowser talking and disappearing with a spin.
Main Blog | Patreon | Twitter | Bluesky | Small Findings | Source: rishisdonuts